Detachable trailers, and especially trailers used for transporting heavy objects, include a load platform carried by a frame supported on rear wheels, and a forwardly extending tongue which is intended to be coupled to the towing vehicle. Such trailers often include a vertically adjustable jack mounted on the tongue for supporting the trailer with the tongue displaced up from the ground at the elevation desired for coupling the trailer to the towing vehicle. A caster wheel is sometimes provided at the lower end of the jack, so that the trailer may be moved when it is supported by the jack.
Problems have been encountered in the past in providing an adequate means for mounting the jack to the tongue. For example, side mounts have been used in the prior art, but there is a tendency for such mounts to twist with side loads. Apertured flat plates, welded to the jacks and to the tongues, have also been used in the past, but such mounts have very little strength. Gussets have also been used in the prior art in conjunction with the flat plates and, although the gussets add materially to the strength of such prior art mounts, they require an excessive amount of welding operations, and there is no guarantee of uniformity from job-to-job.
The mount of the present invention, as described briefly above, in one of its embodiments, is made up of two separate brackets which may be identical, or mirror images of one another, for ease of production and assembly. In accordance with the one embodiment of the invention, each bracket has a base or top plate with an arcuate front edge for receiving the jack, and each bracket has a pair of upturned side walls which converge from the rear edge toward the front edge of the base or top plate. The side walls each has the configuration of a right-angle triangle so that the overall mount has a gusset-like appearance.
The two brackets of the first embodiment are welded or bolted to the tongue of the trailer in diametrically opposite relationship with respect to the jack, as mentioned above, so that the jack extends through the arcuate front edges of the base or top plates. The forward edges of the side walls of the brackets are welded to the jack. In a second embodiment, a one-piece bracket is provided with a central hole for receiving the jack.
With the mount of the present invention, the jack is conveniently and securely attached to the frame entirely from the top, by simple welds between the brackets and the jack, or by sliding the jack through the central hole of the second embodiment, and by simple welds or bolts between the brackets and the tongue framework. The brackets provide substantial fore and aft and transverse strength, and the jack is firmly held in all directions against bending and/or twisting.